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I picked up our new Montauk 150 a couple of weeks ago.
This week my daughter, home for summer break from college, wanted to zip over to Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island from here. We live on Orcas Island, in the San Juans.
Here's the route:
http://www.plotaroute.com/route/111422
Left our marina at about 7:30am. A bit windy, some chop, and it was raining pretty heavily. We almost called it off, but the weather predictions called for some nicer weather mid-day, and our course would let us shelter in the lee of some islands along the way. On the way over, the wind dropped, and we were able to make good speed, but it was raining pretty darned hard. We cleared customs into Canada at the Van Isle marina, and the nice lady there offered us coffee as we looked like drowned rats.
A lovely few hours at the Gardens, and then when we went down to the dock at the gardens, the skies opened up. A line of thunderstorms moved in, and there was a lot of rain and hail. We waited about 40 mins for the thunder/lightning to move on, then made our move back home in the rain and atypical hail. (Oh, turns out hailstones of the right size clog up the bilge pump...)
Somehow though the wind and tidal currents were just right, and the water was relatively calm on the way back, except for large unconfused swells. Yay.
We cleared Customs back into the USA at Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island. They did *not* offer us coffee, but did offer to finish up our paperwork outside so that we wouldn't drip all over their nice clean, dry, warm office :-)
We arrived home safely, with great confidence in our new boat, and immediately fetched our Mustang Suits from our big boat, as we were frozen solid and very wet in our lesser Mustang float coats and water-resistant pants...
Here we are at the oddly not-busy dock at the gardens, waiting for the thunder to move off...
bae, your sense of adventure pretty much matches mine. We took our 13' SuperSport from Bayview, ID, 31 miles up Lake Pend O'reille last summer to Sandpoint.
The locals thought we were nuts to do that in a 13' boat but we knew what the weather was going to be (sunny, no wind, 80's) and felt safe doing it. 62 miles round trip on a 6-gallon tank of gas. Yes, we had a second 6-gallon tank that we switched to just as we got back to Bayview.
A great time was had by both of us as I'm sure you and your daughter did also.
P.S. I looked at some of your other trips. Did you do that trip to Port Townsend in the Whaler? That would be a great trip.
Aren't these newer Montauk 150's great. I just did 72 miles on Lake Michigan over the weekend and did pull 18 or so people on the 2 person Rockin Mable tube behind her. Lots of fun and never had a problem.
Only got rain on once and it was minor.
They take a lot more than we can, but I would have stopped with the downpours you got.
